Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Whither Madison Prep...

The proposed Madison Prep Charter School was voted down by the Madison school board on Monday.   A bold proposal to address the achievement gap in Madison, Madison Prep supporters have a very good point- the status quo is not working for minority students.

There wasn't any magic to the Madison Prep proposal:  longer school year, extended school days, smaller class ratios, additional support services, we know these things work, and taken together these things would likely make a significant impact on student achievement.  But all these things cost significant amounts of money which is ultimately the problem.  What distribution of resources is the most effective and fair?

Personally I would like to see Madison Prep with a contract to operate for a fixed period of time of 3 to 5 years,  with an evaluation against pre-defined goals at the end of that time.  A cost-benefit evaluation could then be made of whether or not Madison wanted to raise the resources to extend the model across the board, or drop it in favor of another model.